- Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

Homeland Security have expanded their operations and besides terrorists they are now chasing music blogs as well. Even if quite a few record label executives might feel inclined to stick the T-label on the bloggers, this is still a change of pace for the war on copyright infringement.
We initially intended to cover this when it happened a few weeks ago, but due to unclear circumstances and uncertainty concerning exactly what legal room Homeland Security operated under, it got temporarily shelved.
This is still a very important issue for everyone who’s working professionally with music, so please take the time to read this article in New York Times, and the statement recently made by Eskay, owner of NahRight, one of the biggest music blogs.
Let us know what your thoughts are on this!
Tags: homeland security, music branding, nahright, new york times, onsmash, piracy
Posted in Legal & copyright | 85 Comments »
- Thursday, November 25th, 2010
The Svea Court of Appeal will give their verdict in the Pirate Bay trial tomorrow. As the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter today asks, is the verdict of any actual interest? Will a conviction actually affect the music and movie industries, or the ones downloading illegally? After tomorrow, the guys behind Pirate Bay may not continue to sway, but their site and file-sharing most likely will.
In April 2009, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström, the guys behind Pirate Bay, were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and were sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 30 million SEK (approximately 4.3 million USD). They appealed, and tomorrow, 26 November 2010, the Svea Court of Appeal will announce its verdict.

The guys behind Pirate Bay have more than 30 million reasons to pray for a verdict of acquittal. A conviction tomorrow would definitely affect them. But for the site itself and the 20 million people downloading movies and music using Pirate Bay, a conviction won’t have any specific impact. Neither will the movie or music industries gain much from such a verdict. The reason? The Pirate Bay trial deals with the specific technology used at the time of the indictment. Today file-sharers play around with new technology developed to make it really difficult to track down any person who is file sharing.

What is there for the movie and music industries to learn? Well, it has been said plenty of times before, by plenty of others, and representatives from the movie and music industries are probably bored to death from hearing it. Yet, it can’t be said enough. They have to evolve, because there’s nothing to gain from fighting strong development. This actually goes for any industry that wants to survive.
Tags: file-sharing, movie industry, music industry, pirate bay, torrent
Posted in Legal & copyright, Pirate Bay | 136 Comments »